SETTING out on his aërial trip over the Cup of Nannabijou did not prove so simple a matter as Hammond had at first conceived it would be. In the first place, he had to get permission from the department at Ottawa before the authorities at the Kam City armouries would even allow him to try out the plane. Though he despatched Inspector Little’s wire immediately after his arrival, it was Monday afternoon before a reply was forthcoming.
The next delay was in getting the machine in shape for the trip. For want of expert attention, the motors and accessories were wofully out of tune, and before he felt satisfied that they were in anything like efficient shape it was too late to make the trip Monday. On the short trial flights he made the engine still showed a disposition to sulk, but by careful handling he managed to keep it alive while in the air.
He determined to fly over the Nannabijou Limits as early as possible Monday morning. Monday night the storm came up, one of the worst experienced in Kam City in years, and the shed out on the exhibition grounds in which he had temporarily housed the machine, was unroofed by the gale and minor damages done to the wings of the plane that it took a couple of hours to repair.
The morning, however, broke crisp and clear, an ideal day for flying and making observations. From Kam City to the Nannabijou Limits was a little better than twenty miles, and Hammond figured he could make it in about twenty-five to thirty minutes at the outside.
But again he had trouble in making a start. Three times he went up and had to come down again to make fresh adjustments. It was ten o’clock before he was definitely on his way across the arm of the lake with the craterlike top of Nannabijou Mountain as his objective.
Though the wind had dropped, the lake was still creased with angry waves. He crossed Superior’s upper arm without mishap. As he neared the limits, his first unusual discovery was the immense amount of pulpwood thrown up along the North Shore and on the islands that dotted it as far as the eye could see. There was only one place all those poles could come from, the airman conjectured as his machine roared onward through the bright, sunlit upper air.